Follow Me

Podcast

Search

The foc08 task for this week is to try to determine the role and behavior of these three roles:

Facilitator

Moderator

Teacher

And to attempt to describe these roles.

Let me say up-front that I totally agree with a comment on Leigh’s blog that suggests the word ‘facilitator’ is being used loosely by many people and institutions. This makes it difficult to have this sort of conversation without getting into semantics. The meanings will be different depending upon the context and also from different people’s own experiences.

Rather than try and come up with a definitive answer, what I’ve done is captured some words and thoughts about each role that sprung to mind when I reflected on them. The following is my summary:

Moderator–to me, this implies the role of referee, adjudicator or arbiter; someone who has control of the conversation; directing flow of conversation.

Teacher–this is a generalisation, and I recongnise that there is a shift away from this (I’ll address this later on), but my perception of the teacher role is based on the traditional ‘schooled’ model: authority; structure; prescribed content; transmission-based; didactic; formal; and based upon expertise.

I want to pick up on the traditional notion of teacher as the expert imparting wisdom and knowledge. This is informed, and perhaps tainted by my own experiences – particularly in the Knowledge Management domain.

Because of the sheer volume of information and exponential growth of knowledge in the twentieth century–if you’re skeptical, I recommend you check out the Did You Know?/Shift Happens presentation–it is almost impossible to master a specific domain. In other words it is increasingly difficult to be an ‘expert’.

Further specialisation and reductionism is one response to this. However, I believe that this will ultimately lead to–and require–new ways of learning, and a change in the traditional teaching role towards a more facilitative style of learning. We need to “move from ‘Sage on the Stage’ to ‘Guide on the Side’”(Kempe 2001: cited in Australian Flexible Learning Framework guide).

So what does a facilitated learning environment look like? Here’s some quick thoughts (repeating the process I used above): networked; informal; self-directed and motivated; social; meaning-making; peer-learning; experiential.

I know I haven’t answered the questions directly, but I’ve enjoyed pondering and reflecting on the different roles and empathize with Leigh’s dilemma.

Nice one Daryl. Just about perfect in my view. So far, in my browsing of posts on this topic – it is yourself and Illya who provide the model posts! But I should be careful saying that, becuase it also happens that you both agree and expand on my post, which was one of the readings for this topic. A problem that! To be a facilitator and then have your own writing as a reading.. leading me down a rather teacherly role. Just wanted to say, well done, and link you to Illya’s post.

Hi Daryl
Leigh pointed me over here as we seem to be thinking in the same direction. I really like this part of the definition of facilitator: creates space for conversations; as opposed to the moderator, who guides the flow of conversation. For me the logical question to follow is – How if at all does conversation come in to play in the role of a teacher?

Your definition seems to imply that conversation is not a part of the teacher role, which I find a very revealing and point and certainly matches the more traditional model of teacher you refer to.

The way I’ve written this, the roles appear to be quite black and white, but I think there are plenty of shades of grey – even within the roles. I think conversation should be a part of the teacher role, but I still see a lot of transmission-based stuff happening

I have to be honest and found this discussion to be a hard one. Every time I got my head around a meaning, I changed my view. But in the end I agree that there are many areas of grey and certainly in my everyday life as a ‘lecturer’ I bring all these roles together, maybe even in the course of one session.
Thanks for the link to ‘shift happens’ – its the first time I have seen it.